The Hindu : Finance Secy. moved out after every budget

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, May 08, 2002

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National

Finance Secy. moved out after every budget

By Alok Mukherjee

New Delhi May 7. The Government today officially announced that the present Secretary in the Department of Economic Affairs in the Union Finance Ministry, C.M. Vasudev, will be the next India-nominated Executive Director at the World Bank. Also, the Deputy Governor of the Reserve Bank, Y. Venugopal Reddy, will be the next Executive Director at the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

Incidentally, with Mr. Vasudev moving out of the Finance Ministry, the Union Finance Minister, Yashwant Sinha, would acquire another distinction of having replaced his Finance Secretary after every budget that he has presented since 1998.

Mr. Vasudev and Dr. Reddy will replace Balmiki Prasad Singh and Vijay Kelkar, respectively, as both of them will end their three-year term on July 31 this year. The two new appointees will also have a three-year term each from August 1.

The appointment of Mr. Vasudev has come as a bit of a surprise since Mr. Sinha had lobbied hard in November last year to get Mr. Vasudev to the position of Secretary, Economic Affairs, the key man in-charge of formulating the budget. The then Finance Secretary, Ajit Kumar, who was also in charge of Economic Affairs, was shifted to the Planning Commission just three months before the general budget, something unprecedented since the budget-making exercise had already begun by then.

However, Mr. Vasudev could not be designated Finance Secretary since the Revenue Secretary, S. Narayan, was senior to him and, for unexplained reasons, the top brass in the Finance Ministry was not willing to designate Mr. Narayan as the Finance Secretary. The Finance Ministry normally has three Secretaries — Economic Affairs, Revenue and Expenditure — and the designated Finance Secretary coordinates the activities of all the three. But since Mr. Vasudev took over last year as Economic Affairs Secretary, there has been no designated Finance Secretary and the Finance Minister himself was said to be coordinating the functioning of the three Secretaries under him.

Interestingly, Mr. Sinha has now acquired the distinction of changing his key operatives after almost every budget he has presented. After the June 1998 fiasco of the "rollback budget" the then top brass comprising Montek Singh Ahluwalia and N.K. Singh were shifted out to the Planning Commission and the Prime Minister's Office, respectively, and Vijay Kelkar was brought in as the Finance Secretary and Javed Chaudhury as the Revenue Secretary. After the 1999 budget, both Kelkar and Chaudhury moved out and P.G. Mankad and Vasudev moved in, though Mr. Mankad, as Finance Secretary, took over the Revenue portfolio and the then Expenditure Secretary, E.A.S. Sarma, moved over as Secretary, Economic Affairs.

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